General

WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is the Windows management tool. It provides the detailed data about workstation hardware and software. List of provided data is almost unlimited – it includes data on installed software, hardware and its current state, launched processes and services, various statistics and lots more.

WMI is based on object-oriented principle, so all OS data are presented as objects (instances) and its properties and methods. There are various types of the objects – they are called classes.

All classes are grouped into namespaces. WMI has one root namespace called Root, which has several namespaces of the lower level. The basic ones are: CIMv2, Default, Security, WMI.

Special WQL (WMI Query Language) language is used to address WMI object. WQL is a subtype of SQL language.

WMI browser is the convenient network administrator’s tool, available in Algorius Net Viewer. You can use it to browse WMI classes in various namespaces, instances of these classes, values of its properties. You can browse data both from local workstation and remotely. You can execute WQL queries and have the derived data displayed.

WMI browser significantly simplifies the configuration of WMI scanning method due to automation of namespace selection and development of WQL query.